Growing Up in PovertyTimothy M. Smeeding – Syracuse University – Interdisciplinary model of child well-being

• Physical/Social Environment• Family characteristics: the child’s

family’s structure (members, roles and family’s well being (income/housing).

• Community environment: Services offered by public and private agencies

• Social attitudes context: (attitudes about race, ethnicity, gender, social-class status)

• Parent/Family Processes: • Adult health condition: physical and mental health

of the child’s caregivers• Parenting behavior: Ways caregivers treat child;

time spent• Other relatives’ roles: Which other relatives interact

with child – type of interaction, frequency, emotional quality

• Resource sharing: Ways parents’/other relatives’ money, time, goods are shared with child

A Macro-Micro Model of Child Development

Physical/Social Environment•Family characteristics•Community environment•Social-policy environment•Social attitudes context

Physical/Social Environment•Family characteristics•Community environment•Social-policy environment•Social attitudes context

Parents/Family Processes•Adult health condition•Parenting behavior•Parent aspirations•Other relatives’ roles•Resource sharing

Parents/Family Processes•Adult health condition•Parenting behavior•Parent aspirations•Other relatives’ roles•Resource sharing

Community/Life Processes•Medical care•Day care•Preschool•Schooling•Adolescence•Job Training•Penal/state institutions•Community activities

Community/Life Processes•Medical care•Day care•Preschool•Schooling•Adolescence•Job Training•Penal/state institutions•Community activities

macro variables

micro variables

Results of macro-micro interactions

Children’s Developmental Outcomes

•Genetic endowment•Health•Self-image•Adaptability•Cognitive Achievement•Interpersonal skills

Children’s Developmental Outcomes

•Genetic endowment•Health•Self-image•Adaptability•Cognitive Achievement•Interpersonal skills

Environmental Stressors’ Effects on Children Raised in Poverty

Stressors are Life conditions and Events•Inadequate housing•Inadequate nutrition &Hearth care•Shortages of funds•Dangerous neighborhoods

Threaten the wellbeing of :

Parents’/Family’s•Health•Work performance•Social relations•Caregiving practices

Acquaintences’•Health•Work performance•Social relations

Acquaintences’•Health•Work performance•Social relations

The Child’s•Health•School performance•Social relations•Dependency

Child’s Developmental Outcomes:• Genetic endowment: Inherited physical/cognitive potentials

effect child’s health, energy level, physical/mental activities• Health: Physical/mental health• Self image: child’s impression of “what I look like, what I can do

well; what I can’t do well• Adaptability: How quickly and successfully the child adjusts to

changing conditions• Cognitive achievement: How well child succeeds in school/

solves problems outside of school• Interpersonal skills: How amicable the child’s relationships are

with various kinds of people – parents, other relatives, age mates, school personnel, members of community

Cynthia Garcia CollThe route of Influences on Minority Children’s Development

Social-Position VariablesRace Social ClassEthnicity Gender

Social-Position VariablesRace Social ClassEthnicity Gender

Racism•Prejudice•Discrimination•Oppression

Racism•Prejudice•Discrimination•Oppression

Segregation•Residential•Economic•Social andPsychological

Segregation•Residential•Economic•Social andPsychological

Promoting/Inhibiting Environments•Schools•Neighborhoods•Health Care

Promoting/Inhibiting Environments•Schools•Neighborhoods•Health Care

Adaptive Cultures•Traditions and Cultural Legacies•Economic/Political Histories•Migration and acculturation•Current Contextual Demands

Adaptive Cultures•Traditions and Cultural Legacies•Economic/Political Histories•Migration and acculturation•Current Contextual Demands

Child Characteristics•Age•Temperament•Health status•Biological Factors•Physical Traits

Child Characteristics•Age•Temperament•Health status•Biological Factors•Physical Traits

Developmental Competencies•Cognitive •Social•Emotional•Linguistic

Developmental Competencies•Cognitive •Social•Emotional•Linguistic

Family•Structure, Roles•Values, Beliefs, Goals•Racial Socialization•Socioeconomic Status

Family•Structure, Roles•Values, Beliefs, Goals•Racial Socialization•Socioeconomic Status

Smeeding proposed that gathering the forgoing sort of evidence about a child in a poverty family provides a profile of information unique to that child’s life

Helms’s Racial-Identity Hierarchies

Black Identity Stages White Identity Stages

6. Autonomy5. Immersion/Emersion4. Pseudo- Independent3. Reintegration2. Disintegration1. Contact

5. Integrative Awareness4. Internalization3. Immersion/Emersion2. Encounter1. Pre-encounter

Black Racial Identity Development:

1st stage: Pre-encounter Two sub-stages: Active and Passive

Active = idealize Whiteness and subscribe to the unrealistic belief that adopting characteristics of White-European culture earns them an established White identity in the dominant White-European society.

Passive = typically denigrate Blackness and ten to believe that they have no recognizable racial identity - only personal that they have earned through skill and effort.

Encounter Stage:

Early:Individual shifts between newly abandoned pre-encounter identity and deeply envisioned potential Black identity.

Late:Encountering the reality of their social status, individuals recognize the possibility of a positive Black racial identity and enter a state of optimism and euphoria as they emotionally adopt Black society as their reference group.

Immersion Stage /Emersion Stage: Immersion The Black person withdraws psychologically and often physically into Blackness and a Black world behaving and thinking in ways that “authentic Blacks” supposedly act and think. In this stage, individuals typically include high levels of hostility and anger toward Whites along with idealizing Blackness and African heritage.

EmersionRetreat into the Black community – express their confusion and distress within a supportive environment. Individuals adopt a non-stereotypical Afro-American worldview that permits their anger to subside and their modes of thought to become more flexible.

Internalization Stage:

Helm’s fourth stage of racial identity consists of Black persons transcending race, displaying a positive personal identity. This stage involves integrating one’s unique sense of self with one’s acceptance of how Blackness influences one’s life/racial identity. One no longer rejects all Whites. Instead, they continue to oppose racism and oppression, but “reestablish relationships with individual White associates who merit such relationships.

http://www.understandingrace.org

“I decided I would reconduct the ‘doll test’ initially conducted by Dr. Kenneth Clark, which was used in the historic desegregation case, Brown vs. Board of Education.” - Kiri Davis, Teen Filmmaker

Educators / Doctor Kenneth Clark and wife Mamie Phillips Clark

“…Exclusion, rejection, and a stigmatized status are not desired and are not voluntary states. Segregation is neither sought nor imposed by healthy or potentially healthy human beings (Clark 1965).”

http://www.racewire.org/archives/2009/04/fifty_years_later_black_girls.html

Brown vs. Board of EducationCultural Doll Experiment

“The conclusion which I was forced toreach was that these children in Clarendon County, like other human beings who are subjected to an obviously inferior status in the society in which they live, have been definitely harmed in the development of their personalities; that the signs of instability in their personalities are clear, and I think that every psychologist would accept and interpret these signs as such (Clark 1954).”

Integrative awareness Stage:

According to Helms, a person who arrives at this fifth level of Black identity formation has the “capacity to value one’s own collective identities as well as empathize and collaborate with members of other oppressed groups (Helms, 1995). At this “most sophisticated” level, a person is able “to express a positive racial self and to recognize and resist the wealth of practices that exist in one’s environment to discourage positive racial self-conceptions and group expression” (Helms, 1995).

White Racial Identity Development

In Helms’s six-level White model, acquiring racial identity is “a linear process of attitudinal development in which the White person potentially progresses through a series of stages differing in extent to which they involve acknowledgement of racism and consciousness of Whiteness…” (Helms, 1990).

Contact Stage: This is the earliest stage entered when a

White person first encounters the idea of Black people, either through direct experience or through such a medium as a parent speaking about Blacks or a storybook or television program that includes Black characters…. may include naïve curiosity, uneasiness, or fear of Blacks... gradually begins judging Blacks as individuals and not as symbols of a racial stereotype.

Disintegration Stage:• This stage is characterized by people’s conscious awareness of their

Whiteness, and awareness accompanied by a disturbing recognition of moral dilemmas, such as those described by Dennis (1981, p.78) as:

• The desire to be a religious or moral person versus the recognition that to be accepted by Whites one must treat Blacks immorally;

• The belief in freedom and democracy versus the belief in racial inequality;

• The desire to show love and compassion versus the desire to keep Blacks in their place at all costs;

• The belief in treating others with dignity and respect versus the belief that Blacks are not worthy of dignity or respect;

• The belief that each person should be treated according to his/her individual merits versus the belief that Blacks should be evaluated as a group without regard to individual merits and talents.

Reintegration Stage:

White’s lingering feelings of guilt and anxiety from the previous disintegration period are now recast as fear and anger toward Black people… may be expressed passively by avoiding contact with Blacks and by seriously discussing race relations only with people who also hold Blacks in low regard. As soon as Whites begin to question their idealized definitions of Whiteness and the justness of racism in any of its forms, they are ready for the next stage.

Pseudo-Independent or liberal stage:

Whites begin to doubt that Blacks are innately inferior to Whites/admit that they themselves have been contributing to racism by their attitude of White superiority/ redefine their own racial identity. Whites who gain sufficient satisfaction and a reduction of guilt during this stage are prepared to rise the immersion/emersion level.

Immersion/Emersion stage: In search for racial identity, Whites often

immerse themselves in accounts of other Whites who have progressed from a White-superiority racial identity to a belief system that judges people’s social status and worth on individuals’ personal qualities rather than on their racial category. “Changing Black people is no longer the focus of Whites’ activities, but rather the goal of changing White people becomes salient (significant) (Helms, 1990).

Autonomy Stage:

A pinnacle of Helms’s racial-identity is reached. Whites no longer feel compelled to exploit, idealize, or disparage other people on the basis of their race, national origin, gender, religion, or social class. The autonomous White wishes learn from other cultural groups, seeks out instances of racial and other types of oppression, and takes action to combat prejudice and exploitation.

Racial-Identity Development of Other Nonwhites:

• By 1995, Helms had updated her theory by extending it to include “people of color.”

• …in the United States, the term people of color refers to those people whose ancestry is at least in part African, Asian, Indigenous, and/or combinations of these groups and/or White or European ancestry. Even a cursory overview of the history of race (rather than ethnic) relations in the United States…reveals that peoples of the so designated groups have been subjected to similar deplorable political and economic conditions because they were not perceived to be “pure” White (Helms, 1995, p. 189).

• Helms generalized her five-level model of Black-identity development to encompass a diversity of other non-White-European cultural groups. Critics have questioned whether such an extension of her Black-identity theory is warranted.

A Pacific Islander’s Experience

Tupuai Lolotai, 16 - Family moved to California5 years ago from American Samoa

Social position Variables: Social-class status changed when family immigrated.

In Samoa, family was considered middle class, owned land, father worked for government.

In California, social status declined- father now loading cargo onto ships, mother pt. time Housekeeper. Rent “moderately run down” three rooms in apartment building in local Samoan community.

RacismOutside Samoan neighborhood, Tupauai family often regarded with suspicion leading to:a)In parents receiving credit/bank loansb)Child not being invited to homes of classmatesc)Child being considered likely perpetrator of scuffles with classmates, vandalism, petty theft.

bro'Town chronicles the misadventures of five teenagers (2004)

Segregation and promoting/inhibiting environments

A. When family came to California, wished to live near friends /relatives. B. People outside Samoan community, by bringing negative prejudicial attitudes to their contacts with newcomers, tended to alienate Lolotai family

C. Only settings which family encounters non-Samoans is parents’ workplace and child’s school.

Adaptive CultureDifferences between Samoan and Californian customs influenced Tupuai’s School career

1.Authority2.Language skills3.Musu4.Cooperative ventures

Samoan culture is multi-level – extended family (aiga), the patriarch (chieftain), the village chieftain and his talking chief, the district chieftain and his talking chief.Samoan children are taught to obey those in authority

At home, (California) Tupuai’s family members speak Samoan. When at school,Tupuai speaks, writes, reads only English (expected to master two difficult languages)

Samoan society is a communal type (a notion of group ownership). This attitude causesTupuai problems in California. North American custom strongly emphasizes sanctity ofPersonal private property. (Don’t borrow anyone’s stuff without asking).Tupuai borrows a notebook or pen without asking… he is accused of stealing and considered a suspect when something goes missing.

MusuThe meaning of the Samoan word musu is approximated in English using such words as bored, irritable, not up to it, kind of sick, distressed, fed up, and dissatisfied.

In islander’s tradition, feeling musu is an acceptable reason for getting up late, being absent from school, not going to work, avoiding routine responsibilities.So – when Tupuai neglects to hand in a homework assignment, misses class – Musu is not an option. Here it would be viewed as nonsense.